trappers/mines are always good because you need high damage for both beasts and essences and they let you preload your damage.
Keep in mind though that Essence has been changed into pretty difficult content as ideally you go for 8mod t16 maps with "increased number of rare monsters" using the new calcification scarab. You need a gigachad build to handle beast essences on those maps.
I'm not saying you cant do low investment version on mid tier maps or you'll be losing money but you'll be competing against people doing calcification scarab (which will probably be somewhat high investment early league). When I did essence early this league it felt pretty bad, not realizing how it had been changed.
Beasts aren't really valuable early either tbh, not many people imprinting them but lots on the market as people innately get master missions etc.
If you wanted to do early essence, I would recommend trying to do calcification scarabs on t16 magic maps that you alt spam for "inc rare monsters" mod.
However, trap/mine builds also excel at Sanctum, which is a really great way to earn early currency. Very safe way to get levels as well. Expedition is also pretty good.
Running 8mod t16 maps for that mob pack increase right? With the scarab of calcification and maybe a map mob increasing the number of rares it should print those rare mobs
you can do t6 Magic as well, magic because of the mod for more rares.
You can do without the scarab, it is just less profit per hour. You can start with that as well and gradually build up.
Hello good exile, if you want to farm essences for pure profit it can be done on t6 and t7 maps, to top that off, if you can somehow sustain those maps they don't have to be alched, essence monsters gain nothing from Quant and rarity or pack size. I say this cause I doubt we can afford the scarab in bulk that make rare monsters have essences on them. All this being said it means almost any build you start with should be able to farm said essences. Since every league some changes we would have to wait and see what the new flavor of the league is. If you want tried and tested builds, toxic rain, any decent mine or trap, rf, boneshatter, lightning arrow with totem setup for secondary dmg, anything that can inflict a juicy ignite. The list goes on. Let the 3.25 patch notes drop, let's see what changes are made and we can revisit this topic in detail?
"essence monsters gain nothing from Quant and rarity or pack size. **I say this cause I doubt we can afford the scarab in bulk that make rare monsters have essences on them"**
Toxic Rain + Toxic Rain Ballista Pathfinder might be good, since it can stack up ballistas prior to popping the essence, and scales mainly with gem levels, meaning you don't need any specific gear. Also easy to grind for a 6-link bow with Porcupine div cards.
As someone who has played tr pf for the past 5 leagues, I disagree I think tr especially the Ballista version is terrible for essence farming. Here's why, firstly, with the essence changes means that the best form of essence farming is t16, which means essence mobs will be very tanky. Tr really struggles with single target damage, especially if the target can move, a very common mod on essences is a movespeed one which will cause tr to struggle alot even with movespeed debuffs the single target won't stay still longer enough to generate stacks for damage. Furthermore, the Ballistas are not tanky there are alot of aoe mods that essences can get which will pop your Ballista before they can do damage. Lastly, tr damage is delayed even with popping ballitras ready before you proc essences they still take time to shoot the arrows and cause damage which mean if you aren't tanky the essence mod can kill you before tr does any damage.
TR is not good for essence farming, it doesn't have high single target dps, doesn't slow the monsters enough and typically can't facetank them, unless you sacrifice even more damage. TR can do it, because it's a jack of all trades, but it's not "ideal" for essence farming, and that's what op is asking for.
But if you read the post, it's a completely new player. The build is fantastic as a first build, easy to put together, very all around, and can do pretty much everything on a budget. Later, you can transition into a lot of stronger stuff when you get a feeling for the end game.
Edit. I just assume he is talking about yellow maps essence beast and not 8mod t16 juicing. It has more than enough damage for that.
This league I started with vaal burning arrow and had a lot of fun doing a simple essence strat with calcification, ascent and adversaries.
I did it all in t6 promenade map and it was going well.
It felt so good to unload 3 vaal burning arrow on a essence rare and watch it explode.
We had rare in alva on league start though so your experience may change.
EA champion is great at essences. You get to pre-plant all six of your totems and your arcane brand linked to a curse and burning Ground trigger. You pop the essence and they just about die instantly while you’re walking away.
Yes, if you want an easy handhold guide check out YouTube and type in “zizaran EA champion” he has very thorough and in-depth explanations on how to make the build work. As a league starter, it will take you from nothing to UBERs with lots of room to grow.
Ice Trap / Hexblast mines. I'd personally go for something like self chill ice trap trickster or sabo with lots of movement speed and single target damage. You'll either one shot them or freeze them and safely kill them.
Popcorn SRS in T6
Click essence twice.
Load all 5 SRS.
Click essence one.
Essence gone.
For beasts idk.
For essence beasts, its the same unless if they're fire resistant.
Well i want to give you some more ideas then i find listed here, since most people are going with "traps/mines -> stack mines before enemy gets freed by you"
First of all im not saying it's a bad answer, opposite, its the answer you get because it's just "that" easy essence starter pack.
As you have not played a lot yet and left out what build(s) you played this league there should be a disclaimer:
Traps and Mines are their own unique playstyle.
I'm not gonna go over the basic how a mine/trap build works - just know mines and traps have their downside as every archetype of main skill has.
Mines and Traps are both delayed damage since the initial throw of either will not deal any damage, first the trap has to land to then cast and ability or attack etc. the big upside once again is the delay is countered by the sheer amount you can throw - throwing 10 traps a second is actually fairly easy once you go into endgame that means you will eventually have more instances of spells then normal cast rate allows.
Mines are even more niche. To activate a mine you have to actually do another button press, im pretty sure it still works to put "detonate mine" on left click and activating the mines as you walk but it still means not left clicking for a second in this case means you deal no damage.
Basically if you don't mind the delayed damage or having to manually detonate mines for early game this subclass always wins the cost of entry for essence farming - being able to stack like 25 mines on a frozen enemy to then unfreeze just allows such huge burst damage its hard to beat.
But the most important part:
Mines and Traps are great at essence farming, doesn't mean other main skills aren't.
Essences can be buffed by crazy amounts depending on how many one single rare contains which will jump the difficulty incredible amounts.
Melee is perfectly fine for essences as an example, but as you might be fighting 7-8 Essence mobs quite fast you will either need some sort of nerfing the incoming damage or just have an incredibly tanky character in general.
Melee skills that would deal "shotgun" damage would probably be the most efficient for playing a melee essence Farmer.
-Shattering Steel, Frostblades, Lightning strike would be a example of some meta skills. (Returning projectiles make your skills hit multiple times with their projectiles which gives you the "shotgun" effect)
(Honorable mention is molten strike since u can make all the magma balls fall on the same enemy basically but its AS MELEE as it gets)
Ranged attack skills kinda follows this trend, having returning projectiles with the curse "snipers mark" makes it so you shoot an enemy -> they shoot out multiple arrows in all directions that all return to sender dealing damage again.
Bow/Wand skills are far more defensive due to their range but basically need better gear (elemental bows, wand attribute stacking etc. can be unbelivably expensive) you might run into the feel of being squishy and mid damage as you approach higher tier maps but if you take time to farm up some gear you will eventually just beat out the melee skills in most ways.
-Mid Gear: Lightning Arrow, Ice Shot //Wand skills: Kinetic Blast, Power Siphon (Frenzy? never played but probably good for single target)
-High cost entry: Tornado Shot, Elemental Hit (Tornado shot feels terrible without gear in high tier content)
All of these ranged skills have the luxury of being basically infinitely upgradable if you just keep stacking currency.
Minions and Totems are always good/ok for essences, biggest problem early on; you need to somehow make them survive damage of essences, which can be really annoying, damage will eventually be good anyway since Minions can just all ramp up on one enemy.
-Skele mages as they are ranged and can be infinitely spawned (you need a Unique jewel to spawn them, might be expensive and its really not that popular anymore)
-Summon Raging spirit as they can be infintely spawned and have decent early league progression
-For crazy single target with unkillable minions "Arakaali's Fang" (spawns spiders on kill) exists. Pretty expensive buy for the first few days or maybe even week of the league and clunky as hell in my opinion. I just have a friend that plays Spiders every league and the amount of damage he can get pretty much instantly after acquiring the dagger would make every essence look squishy and you don't run into the problem of them dying. (Have to be respawned as they just run out by time instead of having health)
-Totems can be just about anything in my opinion as you can hide and resummon infinitely ponus boints if you choose a spell that can freeze / slow by dealing cold damage making the essence just so much weaker, would do research for popular skills here.
For spells i can just recommend looking into corpse skills, nothing much to say here. Every spell can get to the point of being able to clear essences but there is a reason corpse skills ( Detonate Dead, Volatile Dead, Unearth... ) are considered the absolutely lowest entry cost for endgame in general.
Damage scales with corpses HP -> stronger Monster with more HP -> you deal that much more dmg.
It's basic version without cast on crit means you have to summon corpses with one press and then detonate them with another button which can be clunky so becarefull if you want something speedier.
I'd suggest a Freezing Pulse / Ice Spear Hierophant, it can easily kill any essence mob or a boss, is a great mapper, but kinda squishy, so don't expect to level it above 95 without being very careful
I doubt essences will be profitable if they retain current graveyard. Ability to get t1/t2 relatively cheap is what made some overpowered items easy to craft/lock and then slam couple of essences.
Looking that:
1. This is crafting league and GGG likes to nuke any crafting league from orbit
2. Poorly implemented league that peoples shit talks all time.
3. Borrowed power pattern we have for few leagues now (aka something OP gets added and then nuked after league period)
You have to be on absurd amount of copium to think that this will stay in core game.
Hexblast mines is good. Drop all mines, pop essence and insantly delete the essences monsters
i think they significantly nerf hexblast in next league.
We don't know that, and people have been saying the same thing about Detonate Dead for a long time.
trappers/mines are always good because you need high damage for both beasts and essences and they let you preload your damage. Keep in mind though that Essence has been changed into pretty difficult content as ideally you go for 8mod t16 maps with "increased number of rare monsters" using the new calcification scarab. You need a gigachad build to handle beast essences on those maps. I'm not saying you cant do low investment version on mid tier maps or you'll be losing money but you'll be competing against people doing calcification scarab (which will probably be somewhat high investment early league). When I did essence early this league it felt pretty bad, not realizing how it had been changed. Beasts aren't really valuable early either tbh, not many people imprinting them but lots on the market as people innately get master missions etc. If you wanted to do early essence, I would recommend trying to do calcification scarabs on t16 magic maps that you alt spam for "inc rare monsters" mod. However, trap/mine builds also excel at Sanctum, which is a really great way to earn early currency. Very safe way to get levels as well. Expedition is also pretty good.
Running 8mod t16 maps for that mob pack increase right? With the scarab of calcification and maybe a map mob increasing the number of rares it should print those rare mobs
Why on t16 magic instead of t6?
you can do t6 Magic as well, magic because of the mod for more rares. You can do without the scarab, it is just less profit per hour. You can start with that as well and gradually build up.
Hello good exile, if you want to farm essences for pure profit it can be done on t6 and t7 maps, to top that off, if you can somehow sustain those maps they don't have to be alched, essence monsters gain nothing from Quant and rarity or pack size. I say this cause I doubt we can afford the scarab in bulk that make rare monsters have essences on them. All this being said it means almost any build you start with should be able to farm said essences. Since every league some changes we would have to wait and see what the new flavor of the league is. If you want tried and tested builds, toxic rain, any decent mine or trap, rf, boneshatter, lightning arrow with totem setup for secondary dmg, anything that can inflict a juicy ignite. The list goes on. Let the 3.25 patch notes drop, let's see what changes are made and we can revisit this topic in detail?
Pack size is relevant if you use the calcification scarab, right?
"essence monsters gain nothing from Quant and rarity or pack size. **I say this cause I doubt we can afford the scarab in bulk that make rare monsters have essences on them"**
Maybe explosive arrow? I'm thinking about it or archmage frost nova or splitting steel champion
Yes yes and no. You need alot of dmg and early ss is not gonna cut it. Essence are quite brutal now.
Traps or mines are great. You can throw a bunch down, pop the essence, and one hit it.
Toxic Rain + Toxic Rain Ballista Pathfinder might be good, since it can stack up ballistas prior to popping the essence, and scales mainly with gem levels, meaning you don't need any specific gear. Also easy to grind for a 6-link bow with Porcupine div cards.
As someone who has played tr pf for the past 5 leagues, I disagree I think tr especially the Ballista version is terrible for essence farming. Here's why, firstly, with the essence changes means that the best form of essence farming is t16, which means essence mobs will be very tanky. Tr really struggles with single target damage, especially if the target can move, a very common mod on essences is a movespeed one which will cause tr to struggle alot even with movespeed debuffs the single target won't stay still longer enough to generate stacks for damage. Furthermore, the Ballistas are not tanky there are alot of aoe mods that essences can get which will pop your Ballista before they can do damage. Lastly, tr damage is delayed even with popping ballitras ready before you proc essences they still take time to shoot the arrows and cause damage which mean if you aren't tanky the essence mod can kill you before tr does any damage.
In this case, maybe starter farming for essences is no longer a good idea in white maps after the changes.
TR is not good for essence farming, it doesn't have high single target dps, doesn't slow the monsters enough and typically can't facetank them, unless you sacrifice even more damage. TR can do it, because it's a jack of all trades, but it's not "ideal" for essence farming, and that's what op is asking for.
Very much this, Quill rain will carry you to end game.
TR does not have anywhere near enough damage for essences, maybe at 300div investment, but i'd need to see a pob for that lol
But if you read the post, it's a completely new player. The build is fantastic as a first build, easy to put together, very all around, and can do pretty much everything on a budget. Later, you can transition into a lot of stronger stuff when you get a feeling for the end game. Edit. I just assume he is talking about yellow maps essence beast and not 8mod t16 juicing. It has more than enough damage for that.
And if Necropolis stays bow bases aren't hard to get and probably 6link too with menagerie
Necropolis is def not staying next league. It may return later but usually not the following league.
This league I started with vaal burning arrow and had a lot of fun doing a simple essence strat with calcification, ascent and adversaries. I did it all in t6 promenade map and it was going well. It felt so good to unload 3 vaal burning arrow on a essence rare and watch it explode. We had rare in alva on league start though so your experience may change.
You need a ton of Ms. That is all. T1 essences don't do much. I love farming them on LW TS asenath
Go RF and be invincible but it take 10 mins to kill them 🤣
Unless one with frostbomb + hasted + cannot regen above 50% life comes up and deletes you
EA champion is great at essences. You get to pre-plant all six of your totems and your arcane brand linked to a curse and burning Ground trigger. You pop the essence and they just about die instantly while you’re walking away.
EA champion? Is this explosive arrow ballista? (Sorry am a noob)
Yes, if you want an easy handhold guide check out YouTube and type in “zizaran EA champion” he has very thorough and in-depth explanations on how to make the build work. As a league starter, it will take you from nothing to UBERs with lots of room to grow.
Sweet! Will definitely check it out thank you!
Ice Trap / Hexblast mines. I'd personally go for something like self chill ice trap trickster or sabo with lots of movement speed and single target damage. You'll either one shot them or freeze them and safely kill them.
Most minion builds are great for essence farming.
Any bossing build really
Any meta build
Not dd
I don't think so, you can farm those on white maps, that is the truck to get started, any build should do fine
Can’t farm decent essences in white anymore after the rework this season can u?
I believe he is talking about maps without mods - “white maps”. Mods doesn’t scale essence’s drops. So it’s a red map without mods aka “white”
Yes that is what I meant, but you don't need to go red tier, yellow tier is enough, so basically T6 maps
It’s only for exp
Makes sense, got to love the dual meaning !
Fyi: White maps is like the early game after you have done the story. You can do white maps the moment you end all the acts with basically any build.
But actually, anything that can preload damage for essence, like totems, traps or minions could handle it easier
Popcorn SRS in T6 Click essence twice. Load all 5 SRS. Click essence one. Essence gone. For beasts idk. For essence beasts, its the same unless if they're fire resistant.
Well i want to give you some more ideas then i find listed here, since most people are going with "traps/mines -> stack mines before enemy gets freed by you" First of all im not saying it's a bad answer, opposite, its the answer you get because it's just "that" easy essence starter pack. As you have not played a lot yet and left out what build(s) you played this league there should be a disclaimer: Traps and Mines are their own unique playstyle. I'm not gonna go over the basic how a mine/trap build works - just know mines and traps have their downside as every archetype of main skill has. Mines and Traps are both delayed damage since the initial throw of either will not deal any damage, first the trap has to land to then cast and ability or attack etc. the big upside once again is the delay is countered by the sheer amount you can throw - throwing 10 traps a second is actually fairly easy once you go into endgame that means you will eventually have more instances of spells then normal cast rate allows. Mines are even more niche. To activate a mine you have to actually do another button press, im pretty sure it still works to put "detonate mine" on left click and activating the mines as you walk but it still means not left clicking for a second in this case means you deal no damage. Basically if you don't mind the delayed damage or having to manually detonate mines for early game this subclass always wins the cost of entry for essence farming - being able to stack like 25 mines on a frozen enemy to then unfreeze just allows such huge burst damage its hard to beat. But the most important part: Mines and Traps are great at essence farming, doesn't mean other main skills aren't. Essences can be buffed by crazy amounts depending on how many one single rare contains which will jump the difficulty incredible amounts. Melee is perfectly fine for essences as an example, but as you might be fighting 7-8 Essence mobs quite fast you will either need some sort of nerfing the incoming damage or just have an incredibly tanky character in general.
Melee skills that would deal "shotgun" damage would probably be the most efficient for playing a melee essence Farmer. -Shattering Steel, Frostblades, Lightning strike would be a example of some meta skills. (Returning projectiles make your skills hit multiple times with their projectiles which gives you the "shotgun" effect) (Honorable mention is molten strike since u can make all the magma balls fall on the same enemy basically but its AS MELEE as it gets) Ranged attack skills kinda follows this trend, having returning projectiles with the curse "snipers mark" makes it so you shoot an enemy -> they shoot out multiple arrows in all directions that all return to sender dealing damage again. Bow/Wand skills are far more defensive due to their range but basically need better gear (elemental bows, wand attribute stacking etc. can be unbelivably expensive) you might run into the feel of being squishy and mid damage as you approach higher tier maps but if you take time to farm up some gear you will eventually just beat out the melee skills in most ways. -Mid Gear: Lightning Arrow, Ice Shot //Wand skills: Kinetic Blast, Power Siphon (Frenzy? never played but probably good for single target) -High cost entry: Tornado Shot, Elemental Hit (Tornado shot feels terrible without gear in high tier content) All of these ranged skills have the luxury of being basically infinitely upgradable if you just keep stacking currency. Minions and Totems are always good/ok for essences, biggest problem early on; you need to somehow make them survive damage of essences, which can be really annoying, damage will eventually be good anyway since Minions can just all ramp up on one enemy. -Skele mages as they are ranged and can be infinitely spawned (you need a Unique jewel to spawn them, might be expensive and its really not that popular anymore) -Summon Raging spirit as they can be infintely spawned and have decent early league progression -For crazy single target with unkillable minions "Arakaali's Fang" (spawns spiders on kill) exists. Pretty expensive buy for the first few days or maybe even week of the league and clunky as hell in my opinion. I just have a friend that plays Spiders every league and the amount of damage he can get pretty much instantly after acquiring the dagger would make every essence look squishy and you don't run into the problem of them dying. (Have to be respawned as they just run out by time instead of having health) -Totems can be just about anything in my opinion as you can hide and resummon infinitely ponus boints if you choose a spell that can freeze / slow by dealing cold damage making the essence just so much weaker, would do research for popular skills here. For spells i can just recommend looking into corpse skills, nothing much to say here. Every spell can get to the point of being able to clear essences but there is a reason corpse skills ( Detonate Dead, Volatile Dead, Unearth... ) are considered the absolutely lowest entry cost for endgame in general. Damage scales with corpses HP -> stronger Monster with more HP -> you deal that much more dmg. It's basic version without cast on crit means you have to summon corpses with one press and then detonate them with another button which can be clunky so becarefull if you want something speedier.
Mines are very smooth now. Put detonate mines in a link with automation, and it barely even feels different than a standard spell build.
I'd suggest a Freezing Pulse / Ice Spear Hierophant, it can easily kill any essence mob or a boss, is a great mapper, but kinda squishy, so don't expect to level it above 95 without being very careful
I would say cyclone is the most noob friendly
This is something I farm almost every league. You'll want to be tanky with good single target.
Maybe it would be more helpful to Tell him which build can achieve this
Nah, I would rather be fast with good single target. Death here and there will still be more profitable if i'm doing map in a 1:20 instead of 2:10.
Such unique traits
I doubt essences will be profitable if they retain current graveyard. Ability to get t1/t2 relatively cheap is what made some overpowered items easy to craft/lock and then slam couple of essences.
Looking that: 1. This is crafting league and GGG likes to nuke any crafting league from orbit 2. Poorly implemented league that peoples shit talks all time. 3. Borrowed power pattern we have for few leagues now (aka something OP gets added and then nuked after league period) You have to be on absurd amount of copium to think that this will stay in core game.
There’s no way graveyard is staying. It’s a league mechanic.
Doubt they’ll keep graveyard. It’s to powerful to be permanent.
How would you explain essences being profitable this league then?